A Place to Stand

Comments from Scotland on politics, technology & all related matters (ie everything)/"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."Henry Louis Mencken....WARNING - THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS HAVE DECIDED THAT THIS BLOG IS LIKELY TO BE MISTAKEN FOR AN OFFICIAL PARTY SITE (no really, unanimous decision) I PROMISE IT ISN'T SO ENTER FREELY & OF YOUR OWN WILL

Saturday, July 18, 2009

"There are three reasons why, quite apart from scientific considerations, mankind needs to travel in space. The first reason is garbage disposal; we need to transfer industrial processes into space so that the earth may remain a green and pleasant place for our grandchildren to live in. The second reason is to escape material impoverishment: the resources of this planet are finite, and we shall not forego forever the abundance of solar energy and minerals and living space that are spread out all around us. The third reason is our spiritual need for an open frontier."Freeman Dyson, Disturbing the Universe, 1979

"As long as there is the safety valve of unexplored frontiers, the aggressive and exploitive urges of human beings can be channeled into long-term possibilities and benefits... I don't happen to think the frontier is closed. It's just opening up in space... The human race is going out and throughout, wherever space will permit us to go. It's only a question of when, and who, and what kind of leadership will take us there."Governor Jerry Brown, remarks at a symposium, 1977

"The crossing of space ... may do much to turn men's minds outwards and away from their present tribal squabbles. In this sense, the rocket, far from being one of the destroyers of civilisation, may provide the safety-value that is needed to preserve it."Arthur C. Clarke, The Exploration of Space, 1951

"Men go into space .. to see whether it is the kind of place where other men, and their families and their children, can eventually follow them. A disturbingly high proportion of the intelligent young are discontented because they find the life before them intolerably confining. The moon offers a new frontier. It is as simple and splendid as that."Editorial on the moon landing, The Economist, 1969

"Perhaps it won't matter, in the end, which country is the sower of the seed of exploration. The importance will be in the growth of the new plant of progress and in the fruits it will bear. These fruits will be a new breed of the human species, a human with new views, new vigor, new resiliency, and a new view of the human purpose. The plant: the tree of human destiny." Neil Armstrong, "Out of This World,"Saturday Review, 1974

"Once the threshold is crossed when there is a self-sustaining level of life in space, then life's long-range future will be secure irrespective of any of the risks on Earth... Will this happen before our technological civilization disintegrates"Martin Rees, Britain's Astronomer Royal,Our Final Hour, 2003

"Until now in world's history, whenever we've had a dark age, it's been temporary and local. And other parts of the world have been doing fine. And eventually, they help you get out of the dark age. We are now facing a possible dark age which is going to be world-wide and permanent! That's not fun. That's a different thing. But once we have established many worlds, we can do whatever we want as long as we do it one world at a time."Isaac Asimov, speech at Newark College of Engineering,1974

"When it is realized that man's future, his greatest fulfillment, may lie in the cosmos and not on the surface of the earth at all, then it is strongly suggested that mankind has not reached maturity but only completed gestation."Hamilton B. Webb, "Speculations on Space andHuman Destiny," 1961

"The earth is the cradle of humankind, but one cannot live in the cradle forever."Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, 1895

"Given ships or sails adapted to the breezes of heaven, there will be those who will not shrink from even that vast expanse."Johannes Kepler, letter to Galileo, 1610

"Don't tell me that man doesn't belong out there. Man belongs wherever he wants to go--and he'll do plenty well when he gets there."Wernher von Braun, Time magazine, 1958

"Life, for ever dying to be born afresh, for ever young and eager, will presently stand upon this earth as upon a footstool, and stretch out its realm amidst the stars."H. G. Wells, The Outline of History, 1920

"I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I'm an optimist. We will reach out to the stars."Stephen Hawking, interview with Daily Telegraph, 2001

"Space travel leading to skylife is vital to human survival, because the question is not whether we will be hit by an asteroid, but when. A planetary culture that does not develop spacefaring is courting suicide. All our history, all our social progress and growing insight will be for nothing if we perish. No risk of this kind, however small it might be argued to be, is worth taking, and no cost to prevent it is too great. No level of risk is acceptable when it comes to all or nothing survival."Gregory Benford and George Zebrowski, Skylife, 2000

"Remember this: once the human race is established on more than one planet and especially, in more than one solar system, there is no way now imaginable to kill off the human race."Robert Heinlein, speech at World Science FictionConvention, 1961

$5.6 billion on commercial satellite building$2 billion on commercial launch systems That is 1 1/2 times Scotland's GNP. It also takes no account of secondary effects such as the fact that a 24 hour world financial market is only possible because of global telecommunications which means satellites. With world GNP about $70 trillion this comes to about 0.4% which, on the one hand isn't space shattering but on the other is significant. If space related industry were to expand by 20% a year (ambitious but not that ambitious since it is only twice what China is managing & China starts from thousands of years of development not 40) that would exceed the entire Earth's current GNP in 2050.

According to government programmes that is when we should have cut our CO2 release by 80% which gets us back to the level of CO2 production & probably comparable in industrial productivity to Victorian Britain.

I think that puts the options starkly.

Of course the real brake on space development is that we don't have a reliable & commercial way of getting there. We could develop one with a $1 bn X-Prize & with the amount already being earned that is not the sort of investment one puts into promoting new technologies. It isn't even the sort government puts into subsidising traditional business to locate here. Scottish Enterprise, the government department whose function is to encourage new business to locate in Scotland, has had a budget of £500 million so on that basis we should be putting about £800 million into X-Prizes to locate in space, ie £4 bn over 5 years. If that money had been put into such prizes we would have space industries far larger than this by now (& hence more money for investment in a virtuous circle). Meanwhile we spend billions on banks & windmills instead.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

I admire Sarah Palin, and I am astonished at her ability to persevere given the many tasks she has. She was at least as qualified by experience to be Vice President as Obama was to be President, with the exception of the Ivy League education and general membership in the intelligentsia. The most important qualification for President is judgment. The President is surrounded by experts: what is required is the judgment to choose the right people, and decide on the right course of action. No one can be an expert on all the matters on which a President must make decisions.

Palin made one truly great speech, and several very good ones. She doesn't do hostile interviews well. As to judgment, we have her record at Mayor and Governor.

##########################In Expanded Universe, a collection published in the US, Heinlein's last story is about a black woman actress who had previously been a success on a committee & had been chosen for the Vice President ticket to add glamour to the ticket. When the President dies flying his private aircraft (written before JFK Jnr did this) she succeeds to office & cleans house solving America's problems because "there was nothing really wrong with America we just made some stupid mistakes & compounded them by being stubborn". The character is a closer parallel to Nichelle Nichols than to Sarah Palin but I think "Barracuda" Palin gains strongly by the comparison & while nobody can know I suspect Mr Heinlein would have thought so too.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

To balance my previous blog about an intelligent BBC blog I now mention spEak You’re bRanes where a bunch of Hooray Henrys who work at the BBC (they have access to all their computer records of comments censored by from other BBC blogs) prove how stupid the common people are by publishing the excerpts with learned comments as to why they are wrong & the BBC's layabouts right.

For example:"Piss taking ponce", "If he refuses, we can put him in a giant hamster wheel", "Best vote BNP then, as they’ve pledged to build Britain a moat", "Obviously, many of them are also very, very thick", "the global warming thread. I’ve not dared to look in there myself, knowing that if I dipped a toe in, it’d come out marinated in stupid" (that is truly preserving one's ignorance), "the computer I’m typing on. The scales and numbers involved simply don’t fit into my comprehension ...In contrast, the Have Your Say halfwits seem to imagine that the internet is powered by a combination of paraffin, goblin magic and pure luck"

I ran across this lot through a comment on a BBC blog, which I commented on, where they were defending having done a panel on the possibility of spending cuts which contained a Labour party member, a Labour supporter, a former Labour minister & for balance another Labour supporter.

Gosh doesn't it give us bloggers something to aim at to hope that someday we may reach the standard of intellectual debate of these yahoos in which it is not necessary to say why you are right to "prove" your point. Despite the fact that they had attacked this on no discernible factual basis (possibly because I said the BBC were full of genocidal Nazi child rapists though none of them could say what was wrong with that), & people there had demanded I reply it seems I have not yet reached their rarefied heights of schoolboy humour & my replies have been overwhelmingly censored.

Makes you happy to know the licence fee is being devoted to keeping such people off street corners.

Just as we have seen that a disproportionate number of scientists willing to put their heads above the parapet on "global warming" are emeritus (retired) Professors because they can't be leant on, now we see that the same applies to journalists.

On a different subject it appears that in what appeared, at least by their standards, a fair interview with Nick Griffin they censored his remarks about government control over the fascist organisation that attacked him outside Parliament.

“While what has happened in Iran is disgraceful, the reality is that the Hungarian government has used extreme force and violence against political dissidents in that country, particularly against the Jobbik party,” Mr Griffin said. “The Hungarian police regularly use violence against peaceful protestors and the EU never says a word. This is because the victims are not supporters of the EU con game,” he said.

“In Britain, we have the state-endorsed UAF/Searchlight organisation of far leftist extremists, who are official endorsed by all the other political parties. They have a publicly reported track record of violent attacks again the BNP. These have included attacks on individuals with claw hammers, public violence and attacks on people trying to attend BNP meetings,” Mr Griffin said.

“The leader of the Conservative party, David Cameron, is a founding member of the UAF group, which also boasts the signatures of leaders of the Labour, Liberal-Democrat and other parties. Yet for some reason, the EU is strangely silent on this state-endorsed violence against British political dissidents, organised by gangs who are supported with lottery and trade union money.”

Mr Griffin said the Euro-nationalists would be campaigning against the EU’s moves on Iran, which are “part of an increasing tide of war propaganda designed to drag us into yet another wicked, immoral and unjustifiable Middle Eastern war.”

Allegedly the censorship was because their review of what the papers said "accidentally" overran.

So on 3 completely separate subjects it simply cannot be argued that the BBC are not a wholly corrupt propaganda organisation willing to lie in any way to promote totalitarian fascism. Not a penny for the bastards.

What the Conservatives should be doing is pruning government drastically, particularly on the regulatory front where the economic damage to those regulated is 20 times greater than the substantial cost to the taxpayer of employing them. Then putting the money into carefully crafted tax cuts which would include these & substantial corporation tax & possibly business rate cuts. That alone would get us out of recession & into strong growth. I will now quote from Gordon Brown "this is where the serious debate lies—that what can happen depends on growth." Brown says he thinks it more important to "invest" in growth than to balance the budget - and so it is - the only problem that what he calls "investment" isn't it is merely increased spending on the parasitic sector. A large amount of borrowing is survivable if the economy is growing because it gets ever easier to pay off with real wealth. The Conservatives tax cutting promises & the much more serious ones I have suggested would produce strong growth & growth, alone, can get us out of this mess. Reagan went for tax cutting even though it increased the deficit & it worked, despite opponents denouncing it as "voodoo economics" giving the USA a major growth spurt. I would much rather have the budget balanced than not but a growing economy should be the first & overriding priority.

Another quote from Nigel Lawson which David Cameron would do well to consider.

On that basis, or almost any other, Cameron is going to become PM. e will inherit a horrendous mess, worse than it now appears because the borrowing is cosmetically enhancing our economy but that cannot continue. To get re-elected next time he cannot simply make cuts & hope to plow on in the old way hoping the electorate will keep blaming Labour for the mess. Perhaps they should but in another 5 years time they won't.

Cameron should use his first hundred days for massive cuts in the bureaucracy, for putting through the tax cuts he has promised & for cutting business taxes & going for growth. It is politically possible to do it on day 1 but becomes ever more difficult thereafter. A final quote from Machiavelli, who understood more on the subject of getting rid of the damaging part of government than any spin doctor.

100 days of cutting subsidies, regulations, fakecharities, civil servant numbers, civil service recruitment, planning committees, regulators, quangos, the Health & Executive, all the investigators who prevent us building nuclear power stations, the BBC, Ofcom, all the eco-fascist parasites & for good measure the EU would produce rioting in the streets of Chelsea but not elsewhere, national solvency, a fast growing economy & the Tories in power for 50 years.